Everyone is a robot in Yukari Marii's eyes, but how can you prove something like that to someone else? Just like you canít describe green to a blind man itís not possible to prove that you see humans as robots.

Qualia the Purple is a sci-fi mystery manga with a dash of psychological drama serialized in Comic Dengeki Daioh, at time of writing 2 volumes have been released and itís scanlated up to chapter 11.

Our main character is Manabu Hatou, a super robot normal highschool girl with a sweet phone. One day halfway into the term she meets her classmate Yukari Marii who wants to know if Manabu is a boy or a girl.

This is perfectly reasonable because Manabu is a very masculine name for a girl and itís not like thereís any other way Yukari can tell because all she sees is a robot. In fact she sees every living thing in the world except for herself as robots, this makes for very difficult art classes.

Also at their school is Nanami Tenjou.

An old friend of Yukariís from Kindergarten, they havenít gotten on ever since a mysterious event in their past, Nanami is the only other person at school who knows about Yukariís sight. In fact she knows more about it than Manabu does, telling her that it would be better to stay ignorant if she wants to keep being Yukariís friend.

What is the meaning behind Yukariís eyes? What happened between her and Nanami? What do the recent serial killings have to do with her? How many scientific theories will the mangaka put us through?

I discovered this manga about a week ago and I really like it, at first I expected fairly wacky school shenanigans based around Yukari seeing robots everywhere but it very rapidly transitioned into a pretty clever mystery series. I believe itís still currently being serialized but Iím not sure what chapter itís up to in Japan and I hope it continues for a while. The characters are interesting, the art is nothing special but it gets the job done and can be pretty clever when it wants to, the story is really engaging and I honestly have no idea whatís going to happen next, poo poo escalates rapidly and I'm currently being bombarded with SCIENCE. I had to make this thread cause I want to get some more attention this manga's way, I think it deserves some. Check it out here or here.

Translations of this manga suffer from requiring some rather specific scientific knowledge and how to express it in both japanese and english, because of this the only group translating it stalled for a long time. Fortunately two awesome goons in two different timelines have been independently continuing from where they left off, everyone thank Dr_Amazing and FutureCop for doing this and being generally excellent people.
You can find chapters 1-13 on your usual manga reading site, the rest of the chapters will be aggregated here as they finish are on those sites as well these days.

ActionZero fucked around with this message at Mar 8, 2015 around 04:13

Yeah, its shaping up to be pretty interesting. With the tags that were on it initially on Batoto, it looked like a light shoujo ai with an actual plot and interesting leads, but its turned out to be a lot more than that.

Ask me about the hate crime perpetrated against a gay black man, and how it was a real hate crime and totally not fabricated. I am well acquainted with the facts of this actual hate crime which actually took place in actuality.

This looked dark in the first few pages, was fluffy as hell for the next 2 chapters to the point where it looked like typical goofy high-school sci-fi stuff, then goes off the deep end and instead of learning to swim it just takes a deep-diving submarine and heads straight for the Mariana Trench. I was kind of put off by how the first arc ended, so if you're not a big fan of that twist...keep going. Just...keep going.

E: I'm slightly worried about pacing (latest chapter) and the fact that after being so character-focused in volume one, chapters 10 and 11 are zooming through plot with Gaku explicitly 'regressing' as a character, Yukari gone, and no-one else getting page-time. I mean, I like the plot, but it feels like two different manga.

Insurrectionist fucked around with this message at Jul 1, 2013 around 03:26

...your cybernetic implants, the only beauty in that meat you call "a body"...

Grimey Drawer

Not sure what to make of the twisting and turning story and all the Quantum Theory info dumps quite yet, but i really have to say that i didn't expect this to become so... badass. A train of thought that goes "You can never kill me, I have lived a thousand lives; I will bring you down with an infinite army of myself" is Shounen as gently caress.

Yeah, it's kinda at odds with the tone of the rest of this manga's themes, but i'm willing to give it a pass for now.

As awesome as literally everything that's happened post-Cellphone is, I wonder where they are going to go with this. It's not like anyone can really stop someone with the power to try literally every permutation of events at the same time and proceed with the one they like.

The premise of this series is really interesting, but god drat is it wordy as hell. I've only really skimmed the chapters after about chapter 6 or so, but that is at least enough to get the general idea that the main character is as hell, though. I think the most interesting part about the series is that the main character is otherwise completely normal and can do this simply because she accepted that all the alternate possibilities could exist. This could be a false interpretation based on my having just skimmed the later chapters, though. Just double checked and I was indeed mistaken. But still, a combination of a magical cell phone hand and recognizing alternate universes allowing her to do that is pretty neat.

Itís also worth noting that, to my knowledge, all of the scientific explanations (read: walls of text about quantum mechanics) featured in Qualia are accurate, and Iíve consulted a bit with a grad student working in quantum to make sure I have all of the wording and terminology down. If youíre used to terrible usage science, especially quantum theory, in fiction (Muvluv Alternative, anyone?), I think you just might be pleasantly surprised by Qualia.

This is also a light novel series for those who can read Japanese and want to check it out.

I thought it was especially fitting that despite the heaps of science the author didn't really even try to explain Yukari's ability wrt the robots at the end of the first arc at all. Any stupid techno-babble explanation for that would have been seriously out of place.

I'm loving it. I found thatthe author by proxy mentioning how some people would find middle school girls having a very in depth discussion of quantum physics, to be laughably absurd, and the way he challenges that view; to be hilarious and incredibly apt. I'm finding it incredibly entertaining and the scientific and philosophical discussions are surprisingly good.

I am the quanta of my existence
Waves are my body and particles are my blood
I have created over a thousand selves
Aware of loss, Also aware of gain
Withstood pain to create worlds, waiting for oneís arrival
I have no regrets. There are infinite paths.
My whole life was unlimited selves works

I like this. It's like the concept of quantum immortality taken to its utmost extreme as a plot device. Some of the lines are pretty hilarious in their taking of scientific concepts and applying ANIME LOGIC, but drat it can be cool.

Holy poo poo. Just, holy loving poo poo. I thought chapters five and six were crazy, going "what the gently caress?" through them, and then you get to The Point of No Return and can practically hear the wind whistling past your ears as the story takes you for a dive into the absolute best kind of insanity. I will say the pacing seems a bit weird/fast, but it kind of feels like there's a concrete end-point in mind for the overall story so that's fine. I don't expect this to be a terribly long series, though I'd also kill for an anime.

Am I the only one expecting Hatou to eventually develop some way to manifest her Infinite Army into a single world, or otherwise directly and at-will call on the knowledge and abilities of her Infinite Selves?

Haha I totally saw how chapter 6 would play out as soon as the arm came off. I was not disappointed.

9-11, though, I did not see coming. And it was glorious.

What I liked the most about it, beyond having an awesome protagonist, was that unlike almost every other piece of media that has an elementary school understanding of science, this one has graduated to a college freshman understanding of science!

Just blazed through this due to the link in the surreal daily life thread. Definitely not suited for that thread, but I'm glad it was posted, or I might not have found this manga, and that would be unfortunate. The tone has changed so drastically from chill, to intense & weird, to bizarre & fast-paced, but I've loved every chapter.

Does anybody know how many chapters this thing is at in Japan and whether it's weekly/monthly/bicentennial?

Just blazed through this due to the link in the surreal daily life thread. Definitely not suited for that thread, but I'm glad it was posted, or I might not have found this manga, and that would be unfortunate. The tone has changed so drastically from chill, to intense & weird, to bizarre & fast-paced, but I've loved every chapter.

Does anybody know how many chapters this thing is at in Japan and whether it's weekly/monthly/bicentennial?

It's in Monthly Comic Dengeki Daioh, so that should tell you the frequency. For people that can read Japanese, it's based off a light novel, so you can go look for that if you'd like. The scanlator group says the manga will probably have four volumes and it's "way into" volume 3, so... Probably at least 14 chapters right now?

Well, at least it's an adaption from a finished work, so it won't suffer from endless padding (though I doubt it's popular enough to get that treatment anyway). And considering the swerves thrown into the story so far, it getting old isn't among my foremost concerns.

Just blazed through this due to the link in the surreal daily life thread. Definitely not suited for that thread, but I'm glad it was posted, or I might not have found this manga, and that would be unfortunate.

Yeah I was basically deciding that the first couple of chapters totally count to post it under a technicality just so I could follow through with my thinking of "If people like those mangas then they would probably like Qualia" and everyone should read Qualia. Certainly wouldn't expect it to get discussion in that thread, it was just a "Heads up this is awesome."

Man I'm really stunned at the reaction this is getting here, I knew I liked it but at most I expected a couple of people thinking it was cool. I can't wait to see what happens as more chapters come out and drag us along this wild ride. I really need to figure out a good panel of Gaku to turn into an avatar to go with "I act once more in imitation of light" also.

God drat I want an anime.

ActionZero fucked around with this message at Jul 2, 2013 around 18:59

Got pretty when they gave an explanation of Schrodinger's Cat comprehensive enough to appropriately link it to the Many Worlds Interpretation. This definitely seems like the type of series that could fall apart at any moment, but it's refreshing to see sci-fi stuff that's actually scientifically literate.

On another note, this is the first manga I've read that makes heavy use of the huge-eyes-triangle-nose-spiky-hair-ultra-simplified-emotional-expressions style typical of the genre, yet is very clearly drawn by someone who doesn't need to rely on that stylization as a crutch. I'm kind of shocked at how well they pull it off.

You'd think she'd put all that effort into finding a possible world where Yukari isn't dead.

Its not like she can move between worldlines herself. I'm sure there are plenty of Gakus who interpreted the warning about Yukari dying the opposite way and kept her from joining Jaunt, but they're irrelevant since they have no need to avenge someone who isn't dead to them. The author could make up an explanation about Gaku not being connected to them because they don't have a unified goal with her and throw in the word quantum here and there to make it sound convincing if that question arises though.